Gary Neville has suggested that Ruben Amorim might not have complete faith in his Manchester United squad due to his constant lineup changes.
During Saturday’s match against Nottingham Forest, the United manager made a series of baffling substitutions. His tactics seemed to falter as the team stumbled to a 3-2 loss after a game littered with mistakes, chief among them his goalkeeper Andre Onana’s latest howler.
Early on, Nikola Milenkovic put Forest ahead, followed by Rasmus Hojlund’s goal. Despite further goals from Chris Wood and Morgan Gibbs-White rendering Bruno Fernandes’ effort as mere consolation, Neville thinks Amorim should shoulder part of the blame for the outcome because of his decisions during the game.
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Commenting on NBC Sports, the ex-United star opined: “When you keep changing players, when you keep changing your back three, when you take five players off, you’re basically saying to all of them effectively – because they’ve been left out of the starting XI – you don’t trust them.
“And Ten Hag kept doing that a few weeks ago where he kept changing the back players, changing the midfield. All of a sudden, you’ve got a completely different system, a completely different set of players on the pitch at the end of the game and you can never get stability or consistency,” reports the Mirror.
(Image: Getty Images)
Neville added: “Just leave the players on. They actually weren’t playing that bad in the first-half. Obviously they were undermined by the set pieces, in terms of the corners, but the football generally wasn’t that bad.
“Then you allow two mistakes were made after half-time after the first 10 minutes to undermine you and then basically you make changes and all of a sudden everything falls to pieces and it looked really scruffy.
“They looked a mess at the end United with no real shape. I actually think at least in the first-half, they weren’t great but at least they had a shape about them.”
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He added: “I think I said this for Ten Hag for 12 months, pick an XI that you think are the best. We thought that XI today apart from Luke Shaw was close to Manchester United’s best XI you can get.”
Neville, critical of both tactics and effort, commented on Amorim’s frequent changes contributing to consecutive losses and also called out the players for not pulling their weight to elevate the club.
“No good team is ever a good team without hard work,” Neville stated. “Manchester United are 13th in the league and their running stats, their distance covered is 16th in the league. You don’t deserve anything if you’re being outrun every single week.”